Already Perfect is a searing and uplifting new musical by Tony Award winner Levi Kreis. As his Broadway show is about to be filmed, Levi unravels in his dressing room, ready to end it all. When his sponsor bursts in, the confrontation opens a door to the impossible: Levi’s brash younger self steps out. Past and present collide in a theatrical self-reckoning, powered by a score that soars from gospel tambourine to tender ballad. We sat down with Levi to discuss this exciting new project.
1. The show quite literally stages a confrontation between your present self and your younger self. When you began writing Already Perfect, what was the moment or memory that convinced you this dialogue needed to happen publicly, onstage rather than privately in your own head?
You could ask Alanis Morissette the same question and probably get the same answer. I’ve never really separated private dialogue from artistry because art is alchemical. That’s the point of it. It is how humans make beauty from ashes. I have eleven albums that function more like journal entries than polished products. I’ve always lived life through art first, processed whatever needed processing, and trusted that the right people would recognize themselves in it. This particular confrontation – the older self and the younger one – is something I’ve carried for years. I finally reached a point where the conversation wasn’t just therapeutic to me, but potentially to gay folks who grew up like I did. This show is about them. There is tension, humor, danger, absurdity, and a kind of spiritual electricity that only makes sense on a stage. A dressing room becomes a pressure cooker. A man at midlife cracks open the door to the kid he used to be. That’s theatre to me – a private reckoning staged in a very public way. My writing mentors always say “write what you know and your tribe will come.” And if a writer is writing at something rather than writing from something, I’m not sure how that would connect.
2. You’ve had a career that has swung from Jerry Lee Lewis to Hermes to gospel-infused solo albums. How did those musical identities filter into the score here – the tambourine, the ballads, the theatricality – without overwhelming the intimacy of the story?
I’ve lived enough musical lives to know that style only matters if it serves the moment. I didn’t sit down and decide, “This needs to sound like my gospel records,” or “Here’s the Broadway influence.” What I did was follow the emotional truth of each beat. If the younger version of me is pulling the older version into chaos, the music needs that pulse. If memory takes us back to tent revivals, the sound has to carry that conviction – but not in a nostalgic or ironic way. It has to feel lived in. The score is a spine, not a scrapbook. All those musical identities show up because they share the same stylistic origin. Even so, they are only tools. The goal was always intimacy, not a catalogue of my past.
3. The press release describes the piece as “defiantly hopeful.” Was hope the destination from the beginning, or something that emerged only once you stepped into the read through/ rehearsal room with actors who were embodying the earlier versions of you?
I started with honesty – and honesty doesn’t always look optimistic. Once I stepped into the room with the actors, the need shifted. Seeing younger versions of myself embodied by someone else forces you to respond differently. You can’t bulldoze through your own past the way you might when it’s all internal. You sort of have to make space for that kid, whether you like him or not. The hope isn’t sentimental. It’s earned. It came from watching the younger self and the older self actually listen to each other, instead of one trying to bury the other. That only happened once the three of us were in a room making it real.
4. Many performers shy away from exposing their most volatile moments – the unraveling, the doubt, the backstage spiral. What did you discover about yourself in putting that vulnerability at the centre of a narrative you’ve written and must perform?
The trick for me was realizing this isn’t vulnerability for vulnerability’s sake. I’m not interested in the performance of pain. What I discovered is that when you strip away the theatrics around the meltdown – the jokes, the bravado, the backstage chaos – what’s left is the part of a man that’s finally willing to tell the truth. A man whose survival depends on him doing so. Telling the truth isn’t fragile. It’s forceful. It’s clarifying. Playing that version of myself didn’t make me feel exposed. It made me feel focused. When you stop running from the past, the past loses its leverage.
5. This is your musical-theatre writing debut, and yet it sits alongside collaborators with huge Broadway pedigrees. How did that collaborative dynamic shape the structure and emotional arc of the show?
Collaboration sharpens instinct. I came in with a very clear emotional map, because this material is personal. But personal doesn’t always mean theatrical. That’s where collaborators with serious Broadway experience matter – people who understand pacing, tension, release, and how to keep an audience inside a very interior story. The structure became a kind of controlled detonation: memory, humor, confrontation, music, impact, breath. Working with the right people allowed the piece to stay honest without losing shape. They kept the storytelling disciplined while letting the emotional truth stay wild where it needed to be. It’s the best balance you can ask for and one of the reasons I so love working with Dave Solomon, our director.
6. Already Perfect argues that there is “nothing to prove.” For artists trained to measure themselves through applause, awards, and the next gig, that’s quite radical. How does that idea land differently for you now than it might have ten or twenty years ago?
Twenty years ago, I was hustling for validation like everyone else. You think the next gig, the next accolade, the next relationship is going to settle something inside you. It never does. You can spend a lifetime trying to outrun the kid you used to be, or you can finally sit with him and ask what he actually needed. “Nothing to prove” doesn’t mean I work less or care less. It means the work comes from a different place. Not fear. Not scarcity. Not performance. Just clarity. And clarity is a hell of a lot stronger than living for other people’s approval. At this stage of my life, that line isn’t a slogan. It’s fucking oxygen.
Levi Kreis created the role of Jerry Lee Lewis in Million Dollar Quartet on Broadway, winning the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical, and received a Drama League nomination for Distinguished Performance. He has also performed in Violet on Broadway, as Hermes in the first US national tour of Hadestown and as Roger in Rent.
The UK premiere of Kreis’s new musical, Already Perfect, is at King’s Head Theatre, Islington,
9 January – 15 February, 2026 https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/already-perfect-bnrd